“I will not fight Minsc for you, Kriemhild. Though I would know why you wish him dead— Do you understand what I am saying? I want to know why you want him to die. Or do you think that he will kill me?”
The smell of juniper and resin fills the air; on a walk, in a forest, a marriage is being dissolved.
Long, black hair streams from under a tricolour, green-red-black uraeus onto a ranger’s ashen-coloured scale. The armour hides under a red, partly drawn-back dragon’s cloak. The she-spouse has a necklace with a pendant on her neck; a shield with a dragon’s head wrought in dragons’ scales; the shard of a bone club, a bone dagger, in a scarlet sheath; in another, ruby- and emerald-set, a Calishite scimitar; further, a crossbow on her back; the archers’ bracers of a swamp witch upon her forearms; and, finally, below a lupine ear, a red ribbon peeking timidly through the thick, prickly mane, hidden so well that one has to strain, indeed, to notice it— The he-spouse wonders, amused, who has been corrupting his young wife this time.
Yet the transformation is almost finished, inasmuch as it has been possible at all; the jutting jaw with the boar-like tusks must remain, and, in times to come, the half-orc will bemoan its existence as much as an avariel must bemoan her wings’ loss, and for much the same reason—
“No!” the lady now, vehemently, states, taking a few steps away from her husband. “This one begs to excuse—” He, in turn, cuts her short. “Speak human. I know that you are more fluent— better— more good in it than you let— than they think.”
“Minsc is friend,” she then responds, blushing, with her hard eyes shyly on the ground. “That is… not bad? In humans?” She is still fairly unsure; but she adds, “But husband is husband. I have no… devious plan.” This is one word: deviousplan. “No kill?” finally, she pleads, “He is friend. And stupid.” And she is lying.
Lying, on edge, shuddering; why is she lying? One can always trust an elf to unerringly misunderstand the workings of an orc’s mind; nevertheless—why is she lying? To protect her professed friend; or to protect herself? If the friend attacked the husband; if the husband killed the friend, and the friend’s defenders—then, he would find himself either in charge, or removed from the wife’s presence; and either might be to the orc’s mind a desirable outcome. Which one is it? Even when he has forced her to speak a foreign language, the husband still cannot read his wife’s intent; this disconcerts him.
He seeks simple words again, instead. “It is good that you understand this much, halarn. If you want to, be friends with Minsc. Even when I go. However— But I will not give him the right to you.”
His wife, terrified, looks up from the ground at him—and then immediately escapes with her gaze. “Go?”
“Yes. To the cities. That is why there is no need for a devious plan, my wife. I will not stay,” he adds, and even now, he is not sure whether this is a promise—
—or a threat. For she panics, “And this one? I? I will stay? Or go? I will be… free?! More good— Better dead than free!”
This, he finds fairly amusing. “As you wish, my wife.”
The half-orc starts to retreat when he approaches; retreat, and, trembling, reach for the bone shard, and shield herself with her shield as survival instinct finally begins to combat the lifelong subservience imprint; and yet, in accord with the imprint, spouting orcish, plead, “This one begs to excuse, husband, if there has been any unsatisfactory performance, there will be improvement, much improvement, much correction, the… the weakskin will die, but please, please—”
“Halt,” he catches her when she has walked into a tree; forcing her to release the dagger onto the ground below; cursing himself for eliciting the precise reaction he attempted to avoid. Then, in the orcish idiom, he adds, “You will not be clanless, wife. You will be still part of my clan. I told you: I will not give Minsc, or any other, the right to you. I will give it to you, Kriemhild—” A stifled scream. “—but you will still have my name. You will stay here, in Imnesvale, with Minsc and the,” a human word, now, “elf; you will tell the humans that I am dead, and you are my,” a human word, again, “widow. You are rich, and they will need an interpreter— However, whatever happens, you will still be mine; and one day, when I will be a god, you will be my priestess. But now, I must go. You have been a good bride,” he adds, just to make sure she understands she is being divorced, not dismissed; and, somewhere in the midst of the growling, cursing and snarling which is orcish, Kriemhild, tight against the fir tree, calms.
Then, as he releases her, and hits her amiably on the back, and, briefly, unknowingly, holds her close, she starts to rebel demurely, in human speech, “I want not to stay. I want to go with.”
He frowns. “I can take you with me. But Imoen told me that you did not like Trademeet. Athkatla is even more crowded.”
“I want to… safe. Make safe. Make protected.”
“What, me?!”
The idea of a sincerely loyal half-orc bodyguard is to him not unappealing—he had had Tazok, in the past long gone—but, “Why?”
She shrugs, and, with her eyes again firmly on the ground, starts to grunt in orcish, “This one wishes to excuse, but the chieftain Dig Dag is dead. There is no beating. I am… this one must excuse… warm inside.”
“—”
Sarevok is fairly grateful himself when his mind picks up the threads of thought of its own accord, and, shrugging lightly, hoarding the moment like a precious stone, remembering what Irenicus taught him, he begins to speak, almost without thinking, and certainly without emotion, “In Imnesvale, you will have every right to defend yourself, within reason. Try not to kill humans, nonetheless, and take good care of Aerie. I believe she has some experience with raw gems; she will help you value your assets. You can rely on her, as long as you treat her well. Do treat her well, and do not let anyone hurt Minsc or her, either—” He eyes her again, his wife-widow-priestess-possession-chattel-yes: Imoen was correct, as usual: daughter; she should be fine, with Aerie, and away from the orc-wed husband who does not feel for her; and the must to impress him.
But she had been his wife, once. “Keep the scimitar.”
-----
“A witch beset by gnolls?! I will beat sense into their heads until they release her!”
“No, Minsc,” Aerie sighs. “Umar is an evil w-witch. We must help M-Madulf and his… um, f-friends…”
Master, they are—
Gathered in the noon light and the heat of Mairyn’s forest, on the yellow marble of the courtyard before Amaunator’s temple, amidst the gentle whisper of the enchanted fountains and the silence of the birdless forest, the party make quarrel. “No!” the newly instated ranger protector of Imnesvale, unconvinced, protests. “We… would help these beasts—”
“—Beasts?! Why beasts?!”
Silence falls; it is the newly arrived divorcée who has spoken; in the silence, a man’s voice roars, “Evil is as evil does! Who with gnolls lives, as gnolls he is!”
Kriemhild, triumphantly, disagrees, “Madulf lives with orcs! I am half orc! But I hunt dragons! I speak! I am not beast!”
“You, too… an orc?!”
All halts, again; in the silence, Valygar Corthala’s rare, resigned voice clearly, loudly, intrudes. “Ye gods. Has no one told him?”
No one replies; and the Rashemi is sincerely betrayed; and so, slowly, the gleam which followed her trump card begins to fade from Kriemhild’s equally betrayed eyes: understanding supplants hope.
“I— I—” blinking, she begins, desperately; and then, sputtering, she halts; and then, shivering, she starts loudly, inelegantly, suddenly, to sob. “Halarn—”
“Shh. Not now, brother,” Imoen, freshly come to the succour, scolds to the accompaniment of her girlfriend’s transient, scalding look. “Don’t cry, Kriemhild. I’m sure Minsc didn’t mean—” In the background, through the loud sobs, one can hear Mazzy Fentan’s voice, “That Madulf, Minsc, really is decent, for an ogre…” “Yes. Y-you should listen to Mazzy, Minsc,” Aerie adds to the sincere, misguided attempt to convince.
Her protector pays her no heed; he rolls a long look over the histrionic ruckus of the assembly, and demands, “Boo, do my ears deceive me?! Evil has crept into the company and hidden among the heroes, like a wicked wasp which wishes to winter in a hive of busy bees?!”
Silence; then, “E-evil is as evil does, a-as you s-said yourself, Minsc… And she did nothing wrong…”
“It matters not,” a rook’s accent interrupts: Mairyn is with the party. “The lich has caught her prey, and soon, she will reseal her lair. If you are to fight her, my Ranger Protector, it is now or never. We must go.”
Over the still sobbing dragon helmet, Sarevok probes, understanding, remembering, recalling, “Her prey? Those three humans?”
Nalia d’Arnise puckers her lip in sudden thought, “Mazzy. Jermien was very specific on this point, actually. It is three human victims—”
Save for his own, the still sobbing Kriemhild’s and Minsc’s, now frowning as his hamster is consulting him, all heads turn to the dryad. “Mairyn?” a halfling demands coldly.
“Yes,” the nymph is reluctant to admit. “The fight began after those,” an intent look at the weeping Kriemhild, “beasts tracked three young humans into Umar’s cave. Selfish creatures, come to the forest to beat about the bush with sticks—”
The temperature around the party, predictably, drops several more degrees. “Ch-children?” Aerie asks angrily; in the midst of his private consideration, Sarevok decides in passing that his money is on the Andersons; those cretins would be just the kind of idiots— “You—? Y-you f-forgot—”
“What?!” Minsc, torn from his consultation with Boo, volcano-like, erupts. “What children?! Now some naughty children nimbly slipped into the story, like small mice which once sneaked into Boo’s grain hoard, and even Boo didn’t notice them! What children? The gnolls captured children, too? With the witch?! Or a lich? What is a lich, and why is a lich not a witch?! Minsc and Boo must understand!” He looks around desperately, and adds, with feeling, “And is Kriemhild an evil orc or are you not?!”
“I am not!” she yells at him, still crying loudly as only a half-orc can.
Aerie makes a small, determined mouth. “She isn’t. And that l-lich, Minsc…”
“She captured the children, Minsc, and Madulf went to help them,” Nalia interrupts with irritation, without looking at Aerie; that one, however, is grateful when she adds, “H-he promised to protect the village, remember?”
Kriemhild wipes her tears, and accuses, “He does and he does. And you say you will help, and you do not!”
“He said he would help,” Sarevok corrects automatically, considering yet further; a theory takes shape. “Past tense, halarn.”
This is, apparently, the last grain to sway the balance of the scales; the ranger protector takes obvious umbrage. “Past changes naught! Minsc swore, and Boo makes sure that I always keep my word! But if both little animals and little children are in peril, we mustn’t stand here wasting time on idle talk. Onward! Tarry not!”
He moves; Mazzy Fentan, however relieved, still hesitates. “Company—?” she asks the gathered faces.
“Why shan’t we discuss the details on the way, Fentan?” Sarevok proposes pleasantly; at her surprised look, he adds, “In particular, I believe, I would rather know what Corthala has to tell to us. Umar is, after all, his kinfolk.”
-----
“He is right,” Valygar Corthala speaks out, out of a sudden, at last. “I don’t know how he guessed it, but he’s right, Mazzy.”
Elementary: his name; his name’s history; his business here, in the Umar Hills; and his sheer hatred of the arcane and the undead— It fit, simply, Sarevok thinks furiously as needles crunch under his feet and a spirit is leading the Fentan Knights through her dark forest; and as, further, he hears:
“My family… We have always lived in the shadow of magic. Magic flows in our veins, yet every Corthala who even barely touches this power dies insane. A family tale has it that this curse was put on us by Umar, that she seeps our lives and takes them for herself. We have sworn to destroy her for what she has done to us. I came here to fulfil this oath.”
“How?” Mazzy Fentan asks; in the background, one feels, another conversation is taking place, “We will talk when the lich is dead, Boo and you and I! But first, the children—”
“I… thought I trained myself enough for this when I served in the army,” the man admits. “Clearly, given what happened… I was wrong. Umar’s cave, however, can be reached only for one day in a century. The family records confirm this. I have to try.”
“If you try by yourself, you will fail,” Nalia decides. “You will need strong protective magic, and a wizard to bring down Umar’s protections—”
“It’s as well that you met us,” Imoen interrupts.
Aerie, while adjusting her life-giving belt, smiles at her. “Yes! One last adventure, a-all of us, together… What would Boo say about t-this, Minsc?!”
The ranger protector of Imnesvale, called to attention, decides, “Camaraderie, adventure, and steel on steel? The stuff of legend! Right, Boo?”
“Yes. I will help,” Kriemhild replies laconically in the hamster’s stead. Then, also late to the conversation, she adds, adjusting the dragon on her head, “But lich? How we kill?”
-----
—Yet he is a Rashemi berserker, after all.
Minsc in his bull-like charge is, Sarevok supposes, a sight none of his marks have yet seen to survive: a blood-curdling symphony of his red, contorted face, the flashing whites of his eyes, the purple tattoos fiercely alive with the thickened veins of his temples pumping blood through them, rapidly; of, finally, his wide open mouth with its white teeth a-gleam— The Edge of the World, he holds before him, and he almost doesn’t seem to control it as he yells, “Evil, meet my sword! SWORD, MEET EVIL!!!”
Yet if the man’s nature is feral, then he is strong like an ox, a bear, a werewolf; has the sinews of a deer and the quickness of a lynx; and Sarevok vaguely, remotely, regrets not having had the foresight to fight him before such a happenstance would have disturbed the peace of Kriemhild’s mind—
A spell hits this contained fury and falters, now; then, another; the spell-caster reveals herself, almost, and now, Sarevok knows where to search for her with his true sight. His task today is a slow task, a wizard’s patient, precise task, a game of chess, an exchange of figures; to tear down all Umar’s magical protections whilst Minsc has her attention and Valygar Corthala stalks the shadows in wait of opportunity to strike—
-----
—It started with the infernal wail.
“What is it?” Mazzy Fentan interrupted, halting in her tracks and barging on her wizards’ fervent discussion.
“I have no idea, Mazzy,” Nalia replied, unnerved. They barely heard it: a high tone, in the distance; yet it felt dangerous; Aerie covered her sensitive ears. This is horrible, master!
“The entrance to Umar’s cavern lies this way,” the nymph their guide announced; the wail accosted them on the bare summit of a high hill dominating the area; before them, a natural staircase of wide, low stone steps led back down into the woods at the mount’s bottom. The whole landscape was a perfect junction of the three elements: the wind whistling and wailing in their ears, the earth under their feet, the forest stretching before their eyes until the horizon—
“Look! Imnesvale!” Kriemhild pointed; the small village was easily visible in the distance, a clearing among the dark treetops.
“T-there’s so much… air here! It i-is a nice place for a h-house, don’t you think?”
“Not with that lich downstairs,” Imoen, disagreeably, smiled.
“Yes,” Mairyn nodded. “Umar has been a plague of these lands for centuries. I wish you luck, my protector— Remember: you fight her in Mielikki’s name. I will aid you, if I can.”
She nodded to Mazzy and, in a whirl of needles, disappeared; “Well,” the halfling smiled. “Let’s get back to work!”
-----
The woman’s undead flesh has been decaying for centuries; she is clad in the tatters of a purple robe, and in powerful protective enchantments. A ring of fire surrounds her feet, ready to leap and strike any who would touch her; she has been wrapped in a net of illusions; she must be dressed in contingency spells. He starts to weave his own spells to pierce, to breach, to worm his way through her defences; and he wishes again he had Kriemhild and Nalia d’Arnise by his side instead of the two men—
—in the time which has escaped between heartbeat and heartbeat, Umar has scribed three symbols, three runes, three powerful spells: death, stun, fear; has released three her pawns; these now strike, explode into the three men’s faces; but the men, too, are protected—
-----
“Fentan,” the argument started. “The calculation is simple. If Aerie’s gods can only shield three of us—” The elf blushed. “I— I really cannot ask for more, Mazzy,” she started to defend herself; Mazzy Fentan nodded in appreciation of the point. “I understand, Aerie.”
“—and one of these must be Corthala—”
Valygar Corthala nodded. “Yes, Mazzy. I appreciate your support… but Umar is my duty. My blood. My right. I can’t yield now. Besides, my presence, or the presence of my body, may be necessary to break the curse.”
A trace of fear crossed the small face at the mention of a body; but the halfling only repeated, “Of course, good man Valygar. I understand. Minsc, you must be the second, I know. It is your forest…”
“My dajemma may never end, but this is the end of my dajemma!” Minsc puffed up his chest earnestly; a rite of passage, Sarevok thought resignedly, into manhood, no less; all those tests, and trials, and— What for? What did they ever prove? Did women have them, too? Or was it really like that old, used-up, shoddy adage that a woman was born, and a man one had to become; had to prove that he was trained enough, tamed enough, housebroken enough that he could be released safely into the society at large—
He looked around his own sweet court, and marvelled. Those seven… There was a sort of play, a cheap, mundane sort of play wherein several people gathered in a closed compound; and among them, the sleuthhound sought the murderer— In that play, which was this play, all, in the end, were found out to possess their private secrets; yet the murderer was only one; this was he. Whatever their faults, they were incomparable in gravity to his; that was what, after all, gave them the right to hold trial over him.
Yet the death was still missing. That would be, perhaps, the death that would be the price of his asylum: Isaea Roenall’s. He wondered, vaguely, whether Aerie knew when she argued the man’s life, that, a slave in Amn, she must have been the man’s possession; and whether that word would have altered her Ilmatari’s mind—
Himself—were he to be honest with himself, in the end—he, of all, had no right to take offence that a duchess would seek an assassin in a Bhaalspawn outlaw; all that had ever been offended had been, perhaps, his self-love: Nalia d’Arnise had outwitted him. The death itself, meaningless, again, would happen.
In the background, “I understand, Minsc,” Mazzy Fentan smiled again; then, the smile, as always, disappeared when she turned to him. “But that was never the point, Anchev. Why must you go?”
Torn from his thoughts, he smiled into the vacuum, tiredly. “Why, Fentan, to get anything done.”
-----
In piercing her invulnerability, he has committed himself to the fight; the first pawn has been sacrificed.
Umar has found him with her true sight; amidst Minsc’s roaring, she is now looking straight at him, a caricature of a witch, gaunt and skeletal, with her dark Corthala skin stretched tautly on her withered frame. She has no nose; she has no eyes; only, drow-like, two red spots lit up deeply in her eye-sockets; and, yet more drow-like, what little remains of her dark hair is all white— In the eldritch light of her fire ring, she screeches out another spell, pointing at him with her skeletal finger. The spell of death simply washes over him as he casts from his mind another pawn, a secret word, and takes a figure her own; a spell shield is down—
-----
“I am certain of that.”
“Mazzy, you may be certain of that, but I’m not, and I am me!” a voice objected, and a private row turned into a threesome as both debaters turned to Nalia d’Arnise, pale and wide-eyed in protest. “Look, Mazzy. He wants to go. I don’t.”
Mazzy Fentan blinked. “You don’t?”
“No,” Nalia replied, with some slight apprehension, “I don’t. And since I can see where this is going, let me just say this: I, too, know that I’m the best wizard of the four of us. I appreciate your effort to give me the modicum of freedom I asked for. I know that going there on my own would be no different than while having you around. Technically. Theoretically. In practice, I,” a bit of hesitation, then, forcefully, defiantly, “don’t want to die now, not when I’m about to have my life back.”
Not the happiest turn of phrase; Mazzy Fentan blinked and parried, “And what was it until now? A holiday? Yesterday, we fought a dragon—”
Nalia shook her head desperately. “A shadow of a dragon, Mazzy. But this is not the point. Yesterday… it was different. It felt different. It felt normal, to do all that. All of us did that. Today… I have a choice, today. And I refuse. I refuse to be called a coward for not going out there, in three, being the only wizard, the only one who will do anything, and so, the first sensible target, not even knowing if any of my spells will work at all, on my first jaunt without you, against a lich!”
“I…” a small nervous laugh, “I suppose I refuse to be a hero any longer, Mazzy. Don’t take me wrong. I know that heroism is an all-or-nothing deal, and that no matter what I did, all I’ve done will get just wiped out from my account, somehow, simply because I refuse to go in there, into that cave… But I… I just don’t care. I suppose I simply don’t comply with the insanity standards anymore—” Looking at him, she added, in her normal tone, “There is a spell I have to show to you before you go, Sarevok— Actually, why do you think you’ll do better than I would?”
“He doesn’t,” Imoen laughed, suddenly. “But he wants to play at being a hero. And since Mazzy won’t let him…”
“You disappoint me, sister,” he smiled back, coldly. “Heroism is, indeed, a word which purports a keen lack of insight; a quality which, I assure you, I have no intent to exercise. As for Fentan… She has already demonstrated a willingness to surpass what objections she may have had to my command. I merely refused.”
Mazzy Fentan, one must note, was far from satisfied by his fervent defence of her fair-mindedness. “Why can’t Imoen go?”
“Because he has the bigger sword,” Imoen, amused, vouched; and he must wonder on whose side his sister was playing now.
“No, sister. Better enchanted. Fentan, if you are willing to place a bet on the life of Corthala and your foster—if these two,” a nod to Aerie and Nalia, “are your daughters, then shall we call him, provisionally: your son? If you are willing to bet, then, your son’s life, then I will bet you that my weapon is the only one in your company’s possession certain to kill a lich.”
Then, taking pity on a halfling’s dumbstruck disappointment, he added, cheaply, smiling like the bastard he was, “Of course, if you still want me to leave—”
-----
“I need a bigger sword!” Minsc is now yelling through his blind rage; Umar pays the Rashemi no more heed than she would a mosquito; and, once again, he must paint himself, futile, in Minsc’s place; and in hers, Irenicus.
Another pawn sacrificed, another secret word cast and forgotten, another defence down; his breaching spells will not be turned against him now— Umar sneers. Her next spell reminds him of the elf, of course. She would rather dislike it, he believes; then, he remembers her marvel at a dragon’s death.
-----
She had blessed them and chanted over them, and asked her three gods to aid them and protect them from evil, and fire, and confusion, and ward them against death; Mazzy had pled to Arvoreen to lend them courage, and the three of them had cast as many protections over them as they had found the means to— Like true Rashemi witches over their berserkers, Minsc had told them, and they had, duly, laughed.
And now, they were waiting for the berserkers’ return.
Mazzy was taking the wait the worst, perhaps: now, pacing around the hilltop, shaking her head; now, sitting down with a hard look on her face—she looked ready to leap the next moment, to command them to follow her, and attack in succour, heedless of the fact that they had spent all the munitions they had, all the spells, to protect the men, and would be defenceless themselves; and that she was responsible, too, for the lives of those that had stayed.
She longed to be there, in the heat of the action; and Imoen could not fault her; it must have been long since she had been not, and what Sarevok had said— It must have smarted; Mazzy, casting an errant look at her god-given blade, looked ready to ask Arvoreen why he had forsaken her; for what sins she was forced to put her precious double investment into another’s hands, into that man’s hands; and now, that she had finally released Aerie, Minsc and Nalia from under her control—
They left her, alone; restless and hostile, she invited no talk.
Herself, Imoen felt curiously little; certainly, not the apprehension she had felt before the fight with Firkraag. Less, perhaps, for that silly, onetime, girlish notion that her brother was invulnerable; she had seen him vulnerable, repeatedly, and never more so than an hour before, on the crown of Amaunator’s temple— But the plan was sound, and the best they had; and, at least, it put Sarevok and Mazzy out of the other’s sight. An undead wizard, in comparison, was nothing, and worth a bit of crudeness— Even if Imoen swore to herself to find a better sword.
For now, she sidled up to Nalia, sitting slightly removed from the rest, and looked over her shoulder. “Hey.”
“Hey,” Nalia replied.
“That spell you gave to my brother—”
Her life’s first girlfriend looked at her from over her spell book, and smiled. “Khelben’s Warding Whip? It’s easy, really. I can teach it to you. Even now, if you want. I just… can’t seem to work this part out.” She tapped her spell book with a quill, lightly.
“Oh.” Imoen took a peek. “It’s still Jermien’s special chained contingency, isn’t it?”
“Yes, it is,” Nalia rolled her eyes, “‘It’s routine protection.’ I can’t believe I fell for this one—”
“Are you angry?”
She did not love Nalia; and it was easy to bedevil Nalia when Nalia was so stubbornly refusing to see Aerie’s point; or throwing in Mazzy Fentan’s face the whole sense of Mazzy Fentan’s life; or finally, when one was aware that Joneleth Irenicus had cut one’s brother open, and left him fresh, raw and tender, and defenceless, and in need to relearn life’s cruelty all over again, all the way, from the beginning; and when one had, laboriously, widened that gap and that opening, until what had never mattered began to matter; and when Nalia, it so happened, turned out to be the cruelty’s first, inadvertent teacher, seeking a ruthless assassin at a time when the assassin sought a new meaning to his cruelty—
It was less so, perhaps, after one had heard, after that first, shy, inquisitive kiss, “Oh, I’m so daft! I’m such a doofus! He told me you—” and had broken that, with another kiss; or when, after that first night, sheer curiosity, really, one woke up to the sight of red hair scattered on a pillow, and then spent some time together, watching, snickering, from the bed, through a glass-pane window, how one’s brother tried to reign in some ten village kids, aged six to sixteen, and failed miserably; before moving on to more interesting pursuits—
Nalia’s face relaxed. “No. I’m not angry, minette. It’s just…” Her eyes flickered briefly to the side, where Aerie, turned away from them, was sitting in the grass with Kriemhild, “She will waste herself here! She… Can you imagine her with the kind of people who live here? Is she supposed to marry Vincenzo? Or Willet? They are—” She fell silent.
—not our class, not at all, Imoen finished for her, and then felt bad for thinking so; after all, Nalia had not finished, and she had a point. “It seems to be what she wants,” she said, instead, carefully.
“Yes. It seems. But she wanted to come with me, too,” Nalia replied, and now, Imoen must agree with her. It was not pretty, what Sarevok had done here, half-willingly, half-not; necessary, perhaps. But not pretty. Death never was; not even the death of an ideal, which was always a falsehood.
“Elves live long lives, you know. When we die, she will not have changed a bit,” she offered, thinking, Especially when I die. There was almost no chance of her surviving to a ripe old age, was there? Another thing to do, once they returned to Athkatla: to read up on those journals of prophecy, at last.
She cast her sight through Pangur’s eyes; Aerie and Kriemhild were still planning their homesteads.
“I will live in the cave. Below,” Kriemhild was saying as she fingered her necklace. “Here… Too bright. Eyes are hurting.”
Aerie adjusted her life-giving belt. “I-if Valygar lets you,” she laughed. “He’s such a strange man! So angry… O-oh, I really do h-hope they are well!”
-----
The noxious spray hits the ranger protector of Imnesvale in the face; all the rainbow’s colours, from the finest scarlet to the deepest purple— Head to toe in a sea of marine blue and the green of the light filtering through a forest’s leaves, he staggers; and so does Sarevok, amidst bloody red, and sparkling gold, and sunshine yellow.
Corthala, still unseen by her, Umar hit with the very edge of a violet ray, so deep that it was turning black already, the aura of a shadow; whatever it did to him, he, too, survived. Yet now the game finally stops being a game, an intellectual pursuit, a challenge of minds, an exchange of pawns and figures, calmly observed, calmly played—
-----
“—she has wasted some of her spells here, I believe,” Sarevok said, eyeing the silent battleground, littered with bodies, of minotaurs, and gnolls, and orcs, and ogres, fanning out from the cave’s entrance onto the grey, withered grass of the small clearing. Mairyn, the forest’s prickly heart, had carefully prevented any possibility of the company’s coming to Madulf’s aid in time. He wonders why; because Madulf’s people dared camped in her forest, possibly.
The ogre mage himself was a statue among his fallen comrades; the others had had less luck. The likes of this place, Sarevok had seen only once in his life, on Waukeen’s Promenade; even the Shade Lord’s victims had not looked as if they were about to fall into dust the next moment.
“Necromancy,” Valygar Corthala hissed. “Horrid wilting.” Haz, Aran’s wizard, had told Sarevok what the spell he had barely survived had been.
“No finer a place to die than the battlefield!” Minsc cried. “But this… This is no decent witchcraft! We must strike swiftly, so that Evil learns that not even a witch gone evil will escape Minsc’s butt-kicking wrath! Follow me! I will inspire you by charging blindly on! RrraaaAAGHGHHH!!!”
“Has he just—”
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“Dynaheir?! What have they done to you?! Dynaheir?! NO!”
“She is not Dynaheir, you fool,” Sarevok finds himself hissing before he begins, quickly, silently, to cast a breaching spell.
Minsc, fatigued by his blind charge, gazes around disoriented. “Dynaheir!” he repeats, eyeing the dark-skinned lich, lowering his sword, “The gnolls… They have not killed you? No. They didn’t! They failed! You were always a great witch! And I— I failed you, too! Left you alone, and…” An absent look at his hands— “Boo! Where is Boo?! I must tell him… I must tell him you live! But…” He freezes. “—no. Boo… Boo is upstairs, with my witch. And you— You are not Dynaheir! No! Not my witch! I… I remember. I remember it all, now!”
The sword drops to the ground with a massive cling, ridiculing both the chess players and the play with the sincerity of its emotion; in the corner of Sarevok’s eye, Minsc is clutching his head; he looks as if he wanted to tear his eyes out together with the memories as he next howls, like an animal, almost, through his hysteria, “They— They killed her, and then… Then, they gobbled on her and munched her and chomped her, and I… I could do nothing but watch! I had to watch—” There never was a head wound, perhaps; only the last, desperate resort of a mind which found a horror impossible to bear.
Then, the Rashemi raises his head, quickly, and casts one last terrible look around the cave, taking in the entirety of it, and starts to call out for aid through his madness in his throaty tones; a translucent, ethereal crescent materialises in his hands, which he throws, blindly almost, at the lich; it glitters when it touches her, and she stops halfway through her incantation, as though all her magic left her and she forgot how to cast it— But, having performed this deed, he has collapsed, and is sobbing.
A female figure appears; kneels over the man; shrouds him with a cloak; then, for a brief moment, her gaze meets Sarevok’s— I will take him to his women. They will heal him.
Was this necessary? he demands in the timelessness of the encounter. He seemed to be doing well enough on his own.
She eyes him, curiously; and sighs. The forest here has grown in the shadow for too long… I will need him whole. Not all of Madulf’s creatures have been killed, and he must know why he hates them to be able to lead them when your kind awakens.
But did it have to be done this way? It was… cruel.
You dare speak of cruelty, Son of Murder?
I know it.
The woman eyes him, naked and defenceless before her, in silence. I… may pity you when your time comes. But the evil has been done already, and it cannot be undone.
What do you mean?
You will be too late. Simply… too late. But now— Help the one who is not yet mine. His shadow awaits.
‘Not yet yours?’ You are not Mairyn.
She laughs, in the silver tinkle of Vaelasa’s little bells; and he remembers her at last. You, and your sister both— Do you really think she can take my, or Selune’s, place?
-----
—Time returns; the whip-spell, smooth and slippery like a snake, a worm, has slithered through the minuscule hole he managed to bore for it in the firewall; and has brought down Umar’s stone skin. Now, she begins to cast a spell again; she cannot; so does Sarevok; he can, at leisure; the lich’s protection against enchanted weapons disintegrates.
From the darkness, a katana blade: it pierces the parchment skin and fails to penetrate deeper: a contingency spell sets off, and Umar Corthala’s shields, all her shields, are back.
A castling; the king is protected; both kings are protected; neither can act; Umar cannot cast spells; he bears in his mind no spells to cast.
The game… is a draw.
